The Daily Mail has advised that this weeks Byron report said that "allowing children to play on computers unsupervised is as dangerous as letting them play outside on their own". This is going to be bad news for today's release of Crayola Treasure Adventures on the Nintendo DS which is being targeted at kids but is said to depict graphic images of a colour crystal thief. Players of the game are tasked with completing a series of puzzles that eventually lead to the capture of the thief and so restoring colour to the world. ButtonBandits.com has learnt that shockingly, hundreds of titles a year are released which are blatantly marketed at encouraging kids to play on them. The majority of these carry no warning about this requirement of parental supervision.
One such title called Noddy and The Magic Book was released back in October 2006 on the Playstation 2 and is amazingly still available to buy today from leading on-line retailers. The game features two naughty goblins, Sly and Gobbo who have stolen Big Ears' magic book and are using it to play tricks on people in Toyland. One parents review of this "game" on Amazon is chilling in it's encouragement of allowing young children to play it, saying "This is a great game for young children. My 4 year old really enjoys it.". If this wasn't bad enough the parent goes on to say "Let me stress though that on most of the games the average child will not need much help", blatantly ignoring all warnings about the harm this product could cause their child if they are left unsupervised with it! The front cover of the games box even goes as far as to claim the product is suitable for anyone aged 3 years and up.
Fortunately it's not all bad news as it seems some of these so called games may not be too bad an influence after all. Anne Diamond reports in the Daily Mail that a title called "Halo 3? is violent but that there's not really much blood or bad language in it and that her sons tell her it's relatively non-threatening. Look out for discussion on these shocking discoveries in Sundays ButtonBandits.com podcast.
